RT’s Russian-language website attacked other media outlets for using the word “killed” instead of “liquidated” or “neutralized.”

by Alexey KovalevApr 15, 20194 minutes

Russian FSB officer during the operation in Tyumen. Via nac.gov.ru with permission to use with attribution

On April 13, 2019, a counter-terrorist operation unfolded in the Siberian city of Tymen. An assault squad surrounded a house in Tyumen’s residential suburb, evacuated the locals, and exchanged fire with two people holed up inside, killing both. There were no other casualties or victims. The FSB, Russia’s domestic security agency, declared the operation a success and said the two men were Islamic State militants who were plotting a domestic terrorist attack.

The agency didn’t offer much evidence to back up its claim, but it criticized the media for live-streaming the operation. A source in the security services told Znak.com, a regional news outlet:

We are unhappy with the media’s livestreaming [of the operation]. It had originated from a school (where the operation’s HQ was stationed) before the assault began. The terrorists could have seen the livestream, given that one of them was quite well-versed in social media, as his page shows.

Typically, Russian state media outlets take these claims at face value, calling persons killed in such operations “terrorists” without adding any qualifiers such as “suspected” or “alleged.” This time, however, RT’s Russian-language website went even further and attacked other media outlets for using neutral language such as “killed” instead of “liquidated” or “neutralized.”

The terrorists in Tyumen were liquidated, while according to Meduza and Dozhd [independent news website and TV channel] they were “killed”. Okay then

RT’s tweet reignited an ongoing debate about “dehumanizing” language in news reports about terrorism. State loyalists defended RT’s decision to use words such as “liquidated” and its subsequent criticism of publications who had abstained from doing so. Andrey Medvedev, a war reporter for the government-owned Rossiya channel, wrote on his Telegram channel:

A person can be killed. Or even an animal. Animal abusers, for example, kill dogs. But terrorists who put themselves outside the law can only be liquidated. Or annihilated. Or cleansed. Because those who come to our cities to blow up innocent people, to kill (this is where this term is appropriate) them, to bring death, shoot and sow misery — they are beyond humanity. They were born of darkness. They can only be liquidated. Like a hotbed of disease or a colony of virulent bacteria. Like a cancerous tumor and its metastases are removed by radiation.

Other media professionals warned that journalists shouldn’t adopt the language of government agencies, even when there’s a credible threat. Dmitry Kolezev, the deputy editor of Znak.com, wrote:

Even if we fully trust our security services, the FSB and the NAK [National Anti-Terrorist Committee], we’re not under an obligation to reflect reality in a language they are comfortable with. Terrorism is a grave threat, but the label of “terrorist” dispensed in a FSB press release should not cloud our judgement and make us take at face value everything the press release says. Because today the “terrorists” are actual bearded, bomb-wielding terrorists, tomorrow it’ll be extremists from a Telegram chat, the day after tomorrow it’s protest organizers and then it’ll be you. Labels are a dangerous thing.

Ironically, RT’s own English-language social media feed used exactly the kind of language they were mocking their Russian colleagues for:

One day an editor at one of the news websites will receive in their mailbox a press release from a state news agency, praising another heroic feat of the security services. A quick rewrite will follow, replacing “eradicated” with “killed” and “terrorists” with “persons.” They’ll throw in a qualifier “according to FSB’s claims” in a couple of places and then put in “shooting” instead of “special operation” in the headline. It’s nothing complicated or critically important, but when something like this finally happens, I’ll believe that our country has indeed changed.

Russia in 2019 is indeed in many ways different from what it was in 2013, and not necessarily in a positive way. But Oleg Kashin must probably appreciate the fact that many Russian news editors do now consciously eschew the language of government handouts in favor of more neutral wording when dealing with sensitive and controversial subjects like terrorism, as the social media exchange above in this article shows.